‘Time for my tipple and time for your milk.’
Milk, like everything at Redlands, was administered with military efficiency. Miss Whitland, the thin-lipped Assistant Matron, stood stiff and unsmiling, arms crossed above her blue canvas belt. Her job was to make sure that every boy drank his bottle of milk. You filed by under the archway, picked up your bottle, a straw through the silver top, and drank it leaning up against the archway wall. It was always cold, even in summer, and Toby drank it fast to get it over with. He didn’t like cold milk because, like ice cream, it gave him a headache. Miss Whitland knew Toby of old and kept her eye on him making sure the bottle was empty before he returned it to the crate and threw his straw in the bin. Only after you had drunk your milk were you free for break. There often wasn’t time in morning-break to go down to the park, and anyway that first morning of term no one would have wanted to. There was too much to talk about. Christopher’s escape. Christopher and the slippering of the night before. Christopher and the rice-pudding incident. Rudolph glowering in morning assembly. The boys gathered in little groups in the quad and talked of little else.
Toby found himself subjected to a barrage of questions. Surrounded by a crowd of straw-sucking boys he told them all he knew about Christopher, and that wasn’t much. It seemed that Simpson had put it about that he was bosom friends with Christopher. It wasn’t true of course, he’d only spoken to him a few times. He told them that, but they didn’t want to believe him. ‘Did you see him go?’ ‘Did you try to stop him?’ ‘What was he like?’ Unused to all this attention and uncomfortable with it, Toby made himself scarce at the first opportunity.
He was walking past the kitchen door, past the line of dustbins, when Wanda came out shrugging her coat over her apron. ‘Here,’ she called, and she beckoned him over. Toby hesitated, looking around him to be sure it was him she was calling. It had to be him, there was no one else about. She was taller than he thought and even more beautiful. Her hair was a sunburst of curls around her face. Toby found it difficult not to stare at her. He had to force himself to look down at her hands. She bit her nails, but then so did Toby. It only made him like her more. ‘Here, aren’t you the one in the kitchen yesterday?’ Toby nodded. ‘You heard about that boy have you? You ask me,’ she went on, ‘you ask me, I’d run away and all, like he did. What are you all doing here anyway? Don’t your mum want you home? Don’t she love you?’
‘Course she does.’
‘Then what are you doing here?’
It was the talk of home and his mother that choked Toby’s voice. He turned away to hide it, but it was too late. She came after him. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean nothing. Here.’ She took him by the shoulder and turned him round to face her. She was holding out a bar of chocolate. ‘Go on,’ she said, and then conspiratorially: ‘I filched it. Cooking chocolate from the kitchen. Good though.’
‘Thanks,’ said Toby, and when he took it their hands touched for just a moment.
‘See you,’ she said and she was gone, running off up the drive, her coat flapping behind her.
‘Who’s that?’ Toby turned. It was Hunter. Hunter was king of the castle at Redlands, Captain of School and Captain of just about everything else too. He played every sport there was and played them better than anyone else. He always went home at the end of each term with armfuls of cups and prizes. He threw a javelin further than anyone else of his age in the country. He was national champion. Tall, lithe, a crown of close-cropped dark hair, he looked like a Greek warrior out of the history books.
Toby admired him only from a distance and was flattered whenever he spoke to him, which wasn’t often. Hunter was flanked now by Porter and Runcy, both prefects and both sporting heroes, but Toby had never much liked either of them. They could be vindictive. It was best to steer clear.
‘That girl,’ said Porter, ‘who was she?’
Toby was reluctant to tell them anything but he knew he had to. ‘She works in the kitchen,’ said Toby. ‘Mrs Woolland’s daughter.’
‘An oik then is she? You got your eye on her have you?’ Porter smiled his sideways smile.
Toby denied it hotly and began to walk away before they could ask any more questions.
‘Jinks.’ Hunter never lifted his voice – he never needed to. Toby stopped and faced them again. ‘What’s her name?’ said Hunter.
‘Wanda, I think.’ Toby tried to sound casual. Hunter came over to him and looked down at him from the clouds.
‘You’re on my side this afternoon, scrum-half. You any good?’
‘Think so,’ said Toby. ‘I was in the Second Fifteen last year.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Hunter. Toby watched him as he walked away, hands deep in his pockets. (Only prefects were allowed hands in their pockets.) The idea of having to tackle someone that big was not at all appealing. He was just glad that, this afternoon at least, Hunter would be on his side.
Toby liked rugby. At school there was little he really liked, just singing in the choir and rugby. That was all he was good at. He’d found out, almost by accident, that if you were small and you wriggled and side-stepped and jinked you could run past, run through or round much bigger boys; and there was no feeling in the world he liked better than to dive over the line to touch the ball down for a try. After he’d scored a try he could face even Mr Cramer for a double-maths period and not worry about it. Every try you scored meant you were instantly popular, temporarily maybe, but temporarily was better than not at all.
That afternoon, on a hard pitch freshly mowed, freshly marked out, Toby slipped in for two tries from the base of the scrum. He tackled ferociously and threw Hunter long and accurate passes. He grazed his knee in the process and had his knuckles hacked by Runcy, deliberately he thought. But as he trotted back across the gravel drive from the playing-fields in his new boots, Hunter came up alongside him.
‘You were all right,’ he said. ‘You go on like that and you could make the First Fifteen.’ Toby glowed inside. He knew that there was little enough hope of that. Hetherington was faster than he was and tougher. He was off-games at the moment. He’d been in the team the year before and he was bound to be first choice again for scrum-half. Still, Toby could hope. He knew how pleased his father would be if he could get in the first team, even get his colours. He wanted so very much to make his father proud of him, but he rarely managed it. Maybe if he could get into the First Fifteen and even get his rugby colours. He could dream.
He was still dreaming when he heard the sound of a car slowing outside the school gates and turning in on to the gravel. Mr Price – Pricey, the referee and rugby coach, pink-kneed in his long white shorts, shouted to everyone to stand back. A large black car came crunching slowly down the drive, past the rhododendrons. Everyone strained to see who it was. Toby heard before he could see for himself. ‘It’s that new boy,’ said Hunter.
The car came to a stop outside the front door and Christopher got out pulling his suitcase behind him and shut the door. His mother – Toby imagined she must be his mother – was being greeted by Rudolph and Cruella at the front door. She beckoned Christopher towards her, but Christopher was looking at the crowd of boys now gathered on the edge of the playing-field. ‘Simon!’ Toby could hear the anger in his mother’s voice. Christopher’s eyes lingered on the boys for a moment or two. Toby felt a flicker of recognition and half lifted his hand in welcome, in sympathy. Christopher didn’t seem to notice that. He walked around the front of the car and followed his mother indoors, Cruella leading the way.
‘Right,’ said Pricey, slapping
